On Apr 30, 2005, at 1:07 AM, Lars Jensen wrote:
Also, with a minimap, it can easily get to the point where you don't
look at
the 3D view at all, which is a shame.
Possibly, but I feel that most people would want to stare at the larger
graphics on the main map and not stare at a tiny minimap for the
duration of their game. At least, that's how I played games like
Warcraft -- use the minimap to nav quickly to an area, then return my
gaze back to the main map.
But playing Myth, for example, I was constantly wishing I could back
the
camera out farther, tilt it up, play with the views. I always feel
somewhat
claustrophobic when a game won't let me explore freely with the camera
-- I
can understand not wanting me to see blank or bogus parts of the
world, but
otherwise why restrict me? Exploring/experimenting is part of the fun.
I've also had that feeling once in a while with RTS games. My opinion
is that there's two good reasons for the limit (I'm not talking about
Zombies at this point, just RTS in general):
I'd hazard to guess that it would become very CPU-intensive to allow
too much of a pullback, thus pumping more polygons to be rendered.
Things may probably look even worse if the terrain had LOD
functionality -- the polygon reduction on such a terrain might mean
that a unit standing in a hilly valley is suddenly swallowed up by the
terrain reduction.
From a design standpoint, I would think that designers don't want
players to see the "edge" of a map, thus breaking the illusion of a
continuous world. If the camera is allowed to zoom back too far, that's
extra work for the level builders to create terrain that won't be
reachable in the first place. And that may probably leave players
wondering why they can't reach those areas.
So the key is figuring out how to balance camera controls without
over-burdening levels with extraneous detail. For Zombies, I don't
think we have the same problems at this point as I mentioned above, so
perhaps allowing a camera to zoom way back isn't as much of an issue.
==
Jeff Quan
jquan at mindspring dot com
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